The sign implies that he wanted his father’s business, but that isn’t true. My father wanted to leave Auburn, to go play football at state college. He had a full scholarship. He dreamed of going pro. And perhaps he could have done all of that if he hadn’t messed up his knee in his second-to-last game senior year. They were this close to a state championship. Unheard of in a school district like ours. The town still talks about it. His greatest failure a local legend. The punch line for every drunk joke at the bar.
He takes pride in that truck, though. It’s cherry red, and he keeps it shiny and clean all year. It’s probably a beautiful truck to anyone who cares. I don’t. Not when the business is failing and there’s no food in the fridge and we aren’t sure if we’ll be able to fill the oil tank when it gets cold in a few weeks.
Right now, it is not a beautiful truck by anyone’s standard. It is covered from headlight to bumper in crow shit. I want to find it funny, but I know who will face the consequences for this act of defiance, and it isn’t the birds. Mom’s car is out there, too, parked just behind the truck, but it’s clean.
He sees the filthy truck. I can almost feel his anger, the tension pulsing in his arms. He lifts the trash bag and throws it at the tree. It catches a few branches as it falls back to earth, and they tear at the bag’s underbelly, spilling its garbage guts as it descends. His rage isn’t spent, though, so he reaches for another trash bag, and another after that. Some of the crows take flight. Most of them ignore him, which only fuels his rage. The drapes move aside in Mrs. Stieg’s window across the street. Curiosity killed the . . .
Joe lands on my windowsill. I tap on the glass softly in greeting. Hello, Joe.
Downstairs, the front door slams. He finally ran out of anger. Or bags. Our garbage hangs in the branches of our tree, on full display. It’s like our own special variation of Christmas ornaments. I spy with my little eye a banana peel, a cigarette carton, the end of a loaf of bread that no one ever seems to want. Used tissues abound, and the ones caught in the trees almost look like little doves.
I tap the glass again. Why were you up here the other night, Joe? Tap, tap, tap. Why do you watch us? Tap, tap. Can you help us? TAP.
A silver line appears on the glass. I’ve broken it. I tap again, and again, and the line grows, stretching up, slowly, a little with each tap, until it branches into three. Three little slivers of air, searching for the path of least resistance in the glass. Tap. Tap.
The silver lines hit the pane. I press my finger to the line and follow it up.
Sssht. I hiss a sharp intake of breath and shove my cut finger into my mouth. I taste the metal in my blood and the salt on my skin. When I look up, I can’t find the crack in the glass, even when I shift side to side, thinking a different angle will reveal the thin lines again. It’s gone. Or fixed, I guess. Just like the wall downstairs.
I want to see it again.
I slip out of my room. As I pass the girls’ door, it opens, and my sisters’ soft faces appear.
“I’m gonna check on Mom,” I tell them. “Why don’t you two go sit in my bed.”
Downstairs in the living room, I cross to the entertainment center. The voices in the kitchen are agitated but muffled by the sound of running water in the sink. I can’t hear what they’re saying.
I reach the wall where the plaster broke and run my hand over its surface. Smooth. Unmarred. No sign of fresh paint. It’s like it never broke.
The sound of shattering glass makes me jump. I run into the kitchen. Mom had been washing dishes, and one must have slipped from her hand. There are shards of glass all over the floor. She gets the dustpan and brush.
“What a mess,” he says, walking around the perimeter of broken glass. “What a fucking mess.”
“It’s just broken glass,” says Mom as she kneels, sweeping up the pieces.
It was the wrong thing to say.
“Just broken glass? It’s everywhere. So I guess we’ll just step on glass every time we have to use the sink. I guess this doesn’t matter, either.” He reaches into the sink for another glass and throws it to the floor next to Mom. It shatters into crystals that reflect the light in a million directions. If it were anything else, I’d say it looks beautiful.
I step back into the living room as he reaches for another.
And another.
There are bits of glass flying everywhere, and Mom recoils, pulling her hands in to her chest. A piece must have hit her.
“Stop it!” I yell at him from the living room, and he whirls.
He reaches down and grabs Mom’s arm, hauling her to her feet.
“Leave her alone,” I say, running into the room and pulling at his hand where it’s squeezing her arm so tight.
“Leighton, don’t,” Mom says.
He releases her suddenly, stepping away.
“Yeah, well, I guess that makes me the fucking bad guy again.” He reaches for his wallet, keys, gun. It’s only in his hand a moment, the distance from the top of the refrigerator to the waistband of his jeans, but I can’t breathe until it’s away.
“I’m going to the car wash,” he says. “Those goddamn birds made a mess of the truck.”
He is gone a moment later, truck engine revving as he pulls away.
“You okay?” I ask Mom. She nods quietly and starts to clean up the glass again. I hop onto the kitchen counter and put my feet in the sink. I run the warm water, washing out the slivers of glass stuck in the soft bottoms of my feet. When she’s done cleaning the floor, my mom wordlessly gets tweezers and checks me, finding two more pieces of glass embedded in my skin.
“He didn’t used to be like this,” she says as she squeezes the bottom of my foot, trying to get an edge of the glass shard to stick out enough for her to catch it with the tweezers.
I think Mom wants us to walk on the proverbial eggshells. But I’ve never been good with subtlety. I want to throw the eggs at the walls and let them smash to bits. I want the house to look as terrible as it feels on days when we get home and he’s waiting for us with violence in his eyes. I’ve often wondered, Does he need us here? A tree falls in the woods. . . . Where would his rage go with no one to witness it?
Because I feel like I’m always here when the tree falls, and I don’t just hear it, I’m crushed by it. Branches snap my ribs. Leaves fill my nose and mouth until I choke. I hear the tree groan and rumble as it transforms into a monster.
Mom finally gets the last piece of glass out of my foot.
“I know he wasn’t always like this, Mom. I remember. But he’s like this now.”
I scoot off the counter and wobble upstairs on the sides of my feet, careful not to get blood on the carpets.
To be honest, I think he’d yell even if we weren’t here.
He just likes it better when we are.
Auburn, Pennsylvania
September 15
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Chapter Nine
LIAM MCNAMARA FINDS ME AT LUNCH. He folds his long body into the booth across from me, sitting next to Sofia.
“How goes it, ladies?” Liam asks, acting as though this behavior is perfectly normal.
Sofia meets my eyes across the table, and they narrow. I’ve been keeping something from her, and the jig is up.